The Internet is a worldwide network of computers and computer networks arranged to allow the easy and robust exchange of information between the users of the computers. Hundreds of millions of people around the world have access to computers connected to the Internet via an Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Content providers place multimedia information, i.e. text, graphics, sounds, and other forms of data at specific locations on the Internet referred to as websites. The combination of all the websites and their corresponding webpages on the Internet is generally known as the World Wide Web (WWW) or simply web.
Websites may be created using HyperText Markup Language (HTML) to generate a standard set of tags that define how the webpages for the website are to be displayed. Users of the Internet may access content providers' websites using software known as an Internet browser, such as MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER or NETSCAPE NAVIGATOR. After the browser has located the desired webpage, it requests and receives information from the webpage, typically in the form of an HTML document, and then displays the webpage content for the user. The user may then view other webpages at the same website or move to an entirely different website using the browser.
Browsers are able to locate specific websites because each website, resource and computer on the Internet has a unique Internet Protocol (IP) address. Presently, there are two standards for IP addresses. The older IP address standard, often called IP Version 4 (IPv4), is a 32-bit binary number, which is typically shown in dotted decimal notation, where 8-bit bytes are separated by a dot from each other, e.g. 64.202.167.32. This notation is used to improve human readability. The newer IP address standard, often called IP Version 6 (IPv6) or Next Generation Internet Protocol (IPng), is 128-bit binary number. The standard human readable notation for IPv6 addresses represents the address as eight 16-bit hexadecimal words, each separated by a colon, for example 2EDC:BA98:0332:0000:CF8A:000C:2154:7313.
However, IP addresses, even in a human readable notation, are difficult to remember and use by people. Uniform Resource Locators (URL) are much easier to remember and may be used to point to any computer, website, directory or file on the Internet. A browser is able to access a website on the Internet through the use of a URL. The URL may include a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request combined with the website's Internet address, also known as the website's domain name. An example of a URL with an HTTP request and domain name is: http://godaddy.com. In this example, the “http” identifies the URL as an HTTP request and the “godaddy.com” is the domain name.
Individuals, companies, and other entities that provide content on the web generally want to use their name or one of their trademarks as part of their domain name. Thus, domain names are generally company trademarks, personal names or short phrases concatenated with a top level domain name (TLD) extension (e.g. .com, .net, .org, .us, .biz, etc.). Domain names created in this fashion are much easier to remember and use than their corresponding IP addresses. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approves all TLDs and delegates the responsibility to a particular organization (hereinafter Registry) for maintaining an authoritative source for the registered domain names within a TLD and their corresponding IP addresses. For certain TLDs, e.g. .biz, .info, .name, the Registry is also the authoritative source for contact information related to the domain name, so called “thick” registry. For other TLDs, e.g. .com, .org, .net, only domain and name server information is stored within the registry, so called “thin” registry, and a Registrar is the authoritative source for the contact information related to the domain name. All domain names are organized through a central domain name Shared Registration System (SRS) based on their TLD. There is only one organization, or Registry, for each of the ICANN approved TLDs.
The process for registering a domain name with a particular Registry allows a Customer to use an ICANN-accredited Registrar. For example if a Customer, John Doe, wishes to register the domain name “JohnDoe.com”, John Doe may initially verify whether the desired domain name is or is not available by contacting a Registrar. The Customer may make this contact using the Registrar's webpage and typing the desired domain name into a field in the Registrar's webpage created for this purpose. Upon receiving the request from the Customer, the Registrar may ascertain whether “JohnDoe.com” has already been registered by checking the SRS database of the Registry associated with the TLD of the domain name. The results of the search may then be displayed on the webpage to thereby notify the Customer of the availability of the domain name. If the domain name is available, the Customer may proceed with the registration process. Otherwise, the Customer will have to keep selecting alternative domain names until an available domain name is found in order to get a registered domain name.
After a domain name is registered, fees must be periodically paid to maintain the domain name registration. The fees help to pay the Registrar and Registry for the hardware and software necessary to keep track of the registered domain names. If a domain name fee is not paid, the domain name will eventually become available for registration. Typically, Customers pay the fees for their domain names that they are using so that they continually maintain ownership of the domain names. In contrast, Customers are less likely to pay the fees for their domain names that they are not using thereby releasing the domain names for others to register. While many domain names are registered for future use or for their speculated future value, the fee requirement is never the less the most important factor in making previously registered domain names available once more for registration.
Domain names are very valuable assets for their owners. Many domain names are worth thousands of dollars, some millions. Thus, it is critical for the domain owner to renew the domain name before it expires. Typically, domain names are registered for a period from one to ten years. Close to the end of the registration period the Registrar typically notifies the Customer that the domain name is about to expire and the Customer must renew it if the Customer wishes to maintain the registration of the domain name. The notification is usually sent via email. However, many customers use various technologies to combat unsolicited commercial advertisement via email also known as SPAM. Often important notifications from the Registrar to the Customer may be filtered out by the anti-SPAM tools and never get delivered to the Customer. In some cases a white list filtering is implemented on the Customer's system. In this case, only messages from trusted sources (so called white list) are delivered to the Customer's inbox. If the Registrar's email address is not on the white list, the Customer's system may reply with a verification message. It is likely that the employees of the Registrar would never read this verification message because the verification message may be received into an unmonitored email account.
FIG. 1 depicts a typical setting, where a Customer 105 receives a Notification Message 115 from a Registrar 120. The Notification Message 115 is sent by a Registrar's Server 125 to a Customer's Inbox 110 via email.
If the Customer implements an Email Filter 230, as shown in FIG. 2, some messages will be filtered out and moved to a SPAM Folder 235 (in some embodiments they may be simply deleted).
Further, as demonstrated in FIG. 3, if the Email Filter 230 maintains a white list and the Registrar's email address is not on that list, the Email Filter 230 would send a Verification Message 340 to the Registrar 120. In many cases the Verification Message 340 will be received by the Registrar 120 in an Unmonitored Email Account 345, and as a result lost. If the Email Filter 230 does not receive a response to the Verification Message 340, it will not deliver the Notification Message 115 to the Inbox 110.
These and various other anti-SPAM technologies impose the risk of not delivering the notification messages to the Customer and this in turn creates the risk to the Customer of losing the domain name. Additional concerns are that the domain name owners can change their email addresses, lose access to their email accounts, or voluntarily stop checking them. These may all lead to the loss of the domain name as well.
Therefore, new systems and processes are needed to overcome the limitations of the current systems and processes. It is desired to create a system and method that allow notification of Customers with important information from their Registrar.